You might recall our last mystery hit, The Case of the Flaming MagSafe Connector. For those who didn’t follow the thrilling adventures, all you really need to know is that the MagSafe connector on one guy’s MacBook Pro apparently caught on fire while he was out.
Until this point, it seemed like this was an isolated occurrence, but now a forum user has posted his own confrontation with a fiery connector, which involved him smelling something burning while working in bed with his MacBook Pro. Turned out the cord was melting right before his eyes.
Coincidentally, Rob “Not a stranger to fashion” Griffiths just wrote a post on his own blog about his concerns regarding the MacBook/MacBook Pro power adapters, specifically the amount of heat generated by them. He’s also detected a strange “static” noise that seems to be emanating from the brick, one that I’ve confirmed when I put my ear up close to my MacBook’s adapter. I find that while the brick does get hot, it doesn’t always get as hot as Rob is describing. Hopefully, it’ll never get hot enough to burst into flames.
[Forum link via Gizmodo]
Mhhh... a cable that has been dimensioned for the current it must convey can overheat and eventually catch fire in two cases:
1- it gets almost interrupted, so that at some point its resistance becomes high enough to cause appreciable dissipation of power
2- the insulation between the two cables that carry the current in and out breaks, causing a short-circuit.
The second scenario seems more probable but, anyway, it could be caused only by a violent accident or a very bad project.
A crazy conjecture: maybe the owners were so fond of experimenting the "mag-safeness" of the connector that they subjected it to heavy and reiterate stress ???
I have just bought the 17" MBP, and it has an 85W brick. I find that it generates less heat that the previous much smaller 60W brick that I have for the PB12".
The noise in transformer does not seem like an anomaly.
I am more worried about those inflating batteries, though.
The noise emitted from the power brick is not something new to the MacBook/Pros. I noticed the noise one night in bed a while ago, coming from the power brick to my G4 iBook. Rather annoying actually.
Squeaky wheel gets the press release?
Hasn't the mag safe technology existed for years in products made in Japan. Last I remember their country wasn't on fire.
My inner troll says...
First mag plug burnout was caused by a leaky kitty.
Yes, you read that right.
This one looks like it was caused by a teething rodent.
It's so sad to hear about family pets being electrocuted when they chew through wiring, but it does happen. :(